AMD’s consumer offerings are soon expected to get the HEDT X399 and X390 platform. Codenamed Whitehaven, the X399 platform and the Threadripper will probably bring in a disruption in the CPU market. Featuring 16 cores and 32 threads, Ryzen Threadripper is expected to give the same performance (or even better, according to some reports) as the current high-end Intel products. But Intel is not one to be left behind. Latest leaks show the power of upcoming Intel CPUs.

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Intel Core i9 7980XE flagship Skylake CPU leaked

According to latest leaks, it looks like AMD’s Threadripper will face serious competition from Intel’s flagship CPUs. Core i9 7980XE is expected to be Intel’s flagship model of Core X series. Featuring 18 cores and 36 threads, the new Core i9 is part of the Skylake X CPU family and packs the most higher core count ever featured on HEDT CPUs.

A 18 core, 36 threaded chip will be Intel’s direct answer to AMD’s Threadripper when it makes the chip available to consumers on the LGA 2066 socket. The Intel Core i9 7980XE, in short simple words, is a beast. Featuring 18 cores, 36 threads, whopping 24.75 MB of L3 cache and 18MB of L2 cache – totaling to a massive 42.75MB – it’s Intel’s fastest chip and also the world’s fastest.

Although TDP of Intel Core i9 7980XE is slightly higher than Threadripper 1998X, the new Intel flagship features high clock speeds. With full support for Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology, the chip offers overclocking support and features 44 PCI-e Gen 3.0 lanes. However, such awesome features aren’t expected at a paltry price – Intel will inevitably price these premium high-performance chips very high.

There are many more in the lineup – Intel Core i9-7960X, which is Intel’s answer for AMD’s 16 core Ryzen Threadripper CPUs. There’s the Core i9-7940X with 14 cores and 28 threads. Then there’s Intel Core i9-7920X which comes with 12 cores and 24 threads, with over 4.0GHz clock speed. Core i9-7900X will come with 10 cores and 20 threads while Core i9 – 7820X will come with 8 cores and 16 threads. However, the most affordable among Core i9 series is the Core i9-7800X with 6 cores and 12 threads.